What are the metrics and their priorities to compare various hard drives and their accessories for servers?
2 Answers
The metrics:
- Drive type: SSD or conventional hard disk
- Drive connection type: SATA vs. SAS nowadays, maybe FC?
- Capacity
- Rot. speed 5500/7200/10000/15000 RPM
- seek time (is more or less dependent on rot. speed)
- Cost/GB
Not sure what you mean by accessories, though, so some guesses:
- Hot swap case for drives
- RAID controller
- RAID box (i.e. 16disk SATA->FC etc).
Priorities are totally dependent on what you need the server to do and what your budget is.
I.e. if you just need a box to dump files on, without the need for zero downtime and high speeds, you could use server class SATA drives and a software RAID, but if you have a medium-sized database where you need extremely fast query times, you might use a fast SSD drive. So please tell us what you want to do so you can get more helpful infos.
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Thank you for answer. I'm going to host websites and need zero downtime. I can't choose between 4x 120gb SSD and 4x 300gb SAS drives. Capacity doesn't matter since I have a seperated storage layer. I have heard SSDs aren't reliable for a server. Thanks.– JeffNov 28, 2010 at 21:57
There are many comparison factors such as:
1- Speed / RPM.
2- HD drive is hot-swappable or not.
3- Capacity.
4- Form factor.
5- Interface.
6- Power consumption.
7- Cost.
The priority depends mainly on your needs / requirements.